


i don't love you and i always will

by adolescentwolf



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adolescentwolf/pseuds/adolescentwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stands in the doorway with her knife, a jagged extension of her, clenched in her fist. “You’re a werewolf,” she says bluntly. The accusing words hang in the air, polluting it.</p>
<p>Derek doesn’t even look up from his phone. “You’re a werewolf hunter.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	i don't love you and i always will

**Author's Note:**

> This is honestly really sloppy and unsatisfying (at least, for me), but I've sort of given up on it getting any better and it's not terrible as it is, so! Oh: listening to Poison & Wine by The Civil Wars while reading this will probably make it way more entertaining.

Allison finds out about werewolves when she kills one in the woods with her father a watchful, supervising sentinel. It’s frigid, unforgiving November, when blood steams upon hitting the air. She thinks she’ll puke when they clean up after, separate limb from limb and bone from bone, but doesn’t. She digs its grave and buries it, along with a piece of herself. 

They smell like blood and dirt when they get back into the car. 

She is remembering the pieces of her childhood that never quite fit, the multiple homes and the sharp edges and the plaque that hangs in her father’s office. She says, “This is the family business?”

He replies, “This is the family legacy.”

 

 

Her mom is dead. It’s a disturbingly cold thought in her buzzing head. She should feel something, right? Something like anger or sadness, something warm. She just feels empty.

Her dad tells her after the funeral, “Our sons become soldiers. Our daughters become leaders.” What he means is, _You’re our leader now._

He looks tired. His hair is steely gray, his skin tough like leather. When he moves there is weariness in him, deep in his bones. He is not any less useful, which she knows would be the worst tragedy of all.

“Do you ever want to retire?” she asks, because the elderly couple at the table next to theirs looks sweet.

“We retire when we die, Allison,” he says from behind his menu. The passing waitress blinks at them.

 

 

She wears the Argent crest around her neck now, tucked into the necks of her sweaters and dresses even though it’s supposed to be a symbol of her status, supposed to be flaunted. She is now treated with a care and respect that she’d not known at family reunions.

Her cousin Greg doesn’t joke with her anymore. He calls her _ma’am,_ like he’s not four years her senior. The children give her a wide berth, know not to look her in the eye.

Her opinion matters now.

 

 

Her father retires in Idaho, his hand clenched around a bloody weapon. It’s quick and emotionless, the exact opposite of the way her mother died. One moment he’s alive, and then he isn’t.

Allison leaves the bodies of his killers above ground to puff up and split open and rot for the world to see. She buries her dad in the family plot and apologizes to his headstone. (For what, she’s not entirely sure.)

She mourns for an appropriate amount of time, and then moves on the way he would want her to. Or thinks she does, for a while. She moves and hunts, moves and hunts, crosses the country twice in a few months and feels no less haunted.

 

 

“Where’d you get this?” asks the guy who tastes like tequila. He’s touching the scar crossing her collarbone instead of kissing it.

Allison huffs, because she’s more interested in the hardness in his jeans than conversation. “In a fight,” she replies carelessly, then returns to sucking a bruise in his neck.

His name is Scott and she met him in a bar half an hour ago when his talkative friend tapped her on the shoulder and asked her if she believed in leprechauns. He’s good-looking with tousled hair and a wide smile (the California boy look), and he seems genuinely taken aback when she asks him if he wants to fuck.

It’s the flicker of color in his eyes when he comes that tips her off to his being a werewolf, but Allison finds she doesn’t want to kill him—she doesn’t even really care. She’s mostly just glad for a place to sleep for the night before she skips town.

He looks kind of hurt when he wakes up to her pulling on her boots.

“You should, uh, call me,” he says as he follows her toward the front door, a hopeful puppy.

She takes the slip of paper, but tells him not to count on it. Her killing his kind aside, he reeks of romance and good intentions and she doesn’t have time for guys like him.

 

 

In Oregon she almost gets run over by an asshole in a truck.

In all honesty, she doesn’t blame him for not seeing her; it’s near two in the morning and she’s dressed in black and moving slowly. But he immediately makes his assholery known by honking irritably at her, several times. She flips him off. She guesses that’s when he sees the blood on her hands.

He gets out of the car. “Hey,” he calls. “Are you okay?”

She squints, and raises a hand over her eyes, unable to see past the blinding headlights of his car. All that she can glean is that he’s tall and broad. “I’m fine,” she says, doesn’t know if he can hear her. She takes a few more steps toward the other side of the road, the woods where her car sits camouflaged and waiting.

She doesn’t even hear the sound of his footsteps, but suddenly he’s a few feet away from her. Yep, big and broad indeed, with dark hair covering his scalp and jaw. “You’re hurt,” he says.

That she is. She’s got a cut on her hairline and claw marks in her flank. Her last kill fought hard, for an omega. She needs first aid, needs the kit in her trunk and a good twelve hours of sleep. She doesn’t need some normal boy asking questions.

“I’m _fine_ ,” she repeats, but she sways when she takes another step, and he’s catching her.

“Let me take you to a hospital,” he urges. His hands are firm and strong, but he’s gripping her in a way that would allow her to shove him off if she wants to.

“No,” she snaps. “I don’t need a hospital. I need to get to my car. Just let me get to my car.” She’s still saying it when he hooks an arm under her knees and carries her away.

“I’m Derek,” he tells her shoulder as he pulls the seatbelt over her.

“No hospital,” she says. She doesn’t hear his reply.

 

 

She wakes up in a bathtub.

Her shirt has been cut away, and a dark head is bent over her abdomen, examining delicately. For half a second it feels like he’s sniffing her.

“You’re not going to cut out my kidneys and sell them on the black market, are you?” she mumbles.

The head snaps up. “No,” says the guy—Derek—like she was serious. His face is blurred in Allison’s tired vision. “What did this to you?” 

“Animal,” she says automatically.

“No shit,” he remarks, but there’s something off in his tone. He patches her up better than she would’ve been able to herself; her wounds aren’t too serious, just bloody. He helps her into someone else’s clothes, someone about her size. “You can stay here, if you want,” he says. “No questions asked.” This is a sincere offer, said softly with averted eyes.

She doesn’t trust him. He is quiet and reserved, avoids touching her if necessary. He seems unconcerned with the small arsenal in her backpack, if he’s looked. There’s something in him that’s not right, not harmless. But she sizes him up and figures she could take him on her worst day. Besides, she’s bone-tired and in need of healing, and she has nowhere else to go.

“Okay,” she says. 

Derek’s bed smells distinctly male, but not unpleasant. It’s too big for one person, for two people, even, but Allison crawls into the middle of it and curls up in her borrowed clothes with a dagger under her pillow, wishing her dad were still alive and that she were still home, wherever that is. 

 

 

“The ending’s killer,” Allison says. 

Derek blinks at her before realizing she’s referring to the hardcover on the counter, wrapped in gray with a shimmery title: _Gone Girl._ “No spoilers,” he says, turning back to the sizzling pan in front of him. “I’m at the part where Nick fucks himself over in front of the press.”

“Which time?” Allison asks wryly.

He’s got his back to her, but somehow she thinks he’s smiling. There’s a pause as he scrapes food onto plates. “Did you _Gone Girl_ yourself into this situation?” It’s a good tactic, not looking her in the eye; disarming, even trustworthy. She’s used it before.

“No questions asked,” she reminds him. 

He turns around then, pushes her plate toward her along with silvery utensils and orange juice. “What should I call you? Amy Dunne?”

She considers the risks of telling him. “Allison,” she says finally. “Call me Allison.”

 It’s got to be a coincidence that the breakfast he serves up is her favorite, two eggs sunny-side up with a side of buttered bread. That, she doesn’t tell him.

 

 

She wakes up to the creak of footsteps and the murmur of voices and she thinks for half a second that she’s being attacked. She isn’t. The room is dark and empty except for her. The clock reads 3:02 AM.

She gets up with effort and tiptoes to the door, catches a glimpse of Derek in the living room with a phone pressed to his ear.

“No, I can’t,” he’s saying quietly. He pauses while the person on the other end talks. “I _know_ what I said,” he snaps, “but I can’t make it. Something’s come up.” Pause. “None of your business. Look, just tell Laura I’ll make it up to her, okay? Thank you.” He hangs up and throws the phone on the couch before scrubbing a hand over his face, his hair.

Allison is missing something. She doesn’t like it.

 

 

She has to move slowly now. Everything hurts and she is used to sharp quickness, fast reflexes, running and jumping. She is now resigned to stagnancy. She sits still most of the time, leafing through Derek’s books—stacking and spilling all over the apartment—and sleeping. Derek is silent. He reads, mostly, sometimes types away at his laptop. His phone pings periodically, but he never goes to read whatever messages he’s getting. She catches a glimpse of one of them once.

  
(10:42 AM) L: Fucking call me back, you dick

  
Allison has similarly-toned messages on her own phone, including gems like:  
  
(2 Days Ago) Greg A: Do u know what a sabbatical is? Clue: not this 

  
(Yesterday) Emilie A: Now would be the time to check in, lil cousin

  
(9:14 AM) Emilie A: Mom is literally ready to send out a fucking search party

  
She had sent back a quick reply.

  
(9:45 AM) Allison A: I’m ok. Call off the troops

  
Derek, true to his word, doesn’t ask any questions. Meanwhile, she has plenty of her own. She tries to mind her own business, but she is still suspicious. He moves too fast, hears too well. She is sure that she sees him cut his finger once but there is no blood, no wound. She is not stupid.

  

 

She stands in the doorway with her knife, a jagged extension of her, clenched in her fist. “You’re a werewolf,” she says bluntly. The accusing words hang in the air, polluting it.

Derek doesn’t even look up from his phone. “You’re a werewolf hunter.”

She is taken aback, though not quite. He has little reason to fear her. She is smaller than he is, and has failed to kill him right off the bat. A mistake he made as well. “Why didn’t you kill me?” she asks. He looks up at her then, pale eyes inquisitive and hard. “I’ve killed plenty of you,” she says harshly. She waits, tightening her grip on her knife, but he does not explode. 

“I don’t hold grudges,” he tells her calmly. “And…” He hesitates. “I didn’t want to.” He levels his gaze at her. “I’m guessing you don’t want to kill me either, since you haven’t tried yet.”

 Allison presses her lips together. He’s right. She approaches cautiously, letting her knife arm fall to her side. “Are you an omega?” she asks.

 Something around Derek’s mouth hardens. “No,” he replies. “I have a pack.”

 “Laura,” says Allison.

 “My sister.”

 Allison nods to herself. “Why are you helping me?” she asks curiously. “You could’ve kicked me out days ago. You could’ve killed me the minute you saw me.”

 “I’m not a killer, believe it or not,” Derek says. “And I thought you needed my help.”

She considers him, the entirely human him. It is always unnerving; the way so-called monsters are so normal. “I do,” she says. She takes another few steps forward and places the knife on the counter near him in a clear statement before leaving the room.

  

 

She dreams of her wandering father, dreams that he is shouting her name into the void and that he is deaf to her screamed responses. She dreams of her steely-eyed mother, of the sneer to her mouth and the wordless, heavy disapproval in her sharp gaze. She dreams of her aunt Kate rotting in her grave, dreams that her eyes snap open and her clawed hands cut into Allison’s shoulders as she opens her decomposing maw to swallow her whole.

She wakes up in tears and in restraints, big coarse hands that hold her wrists like manacles and arms that are raked with red lines that quickly fade. Derek is looking at her fearfully, saying her name.

She dissolves into hacking sobs and curls in on herself, is comforted by the warmth of the very long hug that he gives her, by the drumbeat of his heart.

He does not ask questions, and he is gone when she wakes again.

 

 

Allison stares at the running shower for a long time before saying Derek’s name. She doesn’t need to call or yell; he hears her.

He appears in the doorway immediately, brows shoved together in concern. His eyes flick from the running water to her questioningly. “What is it?”

“Can you help me get in?” she asks. She tugs on the hem of her borrowed shirt. “I can’t get this off on my own and…” She sees a blank face. “Look, I don’t really care if you see me naked. I just—I reek.”

“I think you smell nice,” says Derek.

Allison blinks. Derek seems to be regretting what he just said. She supposes it’s impossible for werewolves not to smell the people around them, but she just didn’t think he paid any attention. “I just want to feel clean,” she says.

There is a pause. Derek looks considerably less like the brooding werewolf he usually is. He nods at last.

Up goes Allison’s shirt, over her head and carefully down her arm so as not to jostle her wounded side. Zip goes her jeans, down her legs and into the corner. Swish goes her panties. Clip goes her bra. Derek holds her elbow to steady her, stares firmly at a spot over her head.

Allison doesn’t mind being seen naked. She has an athlete’s body, solid with muscle, has been admired by boys and girls. Derek’s reaction is unfamiliar; his mouth a thin line, eyes fixed pointedly as she steps behind cloudy glass into warm water.

“Thanks,” she says, feels it’s not enough.

There is silence. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” he says stiffly, and then he’s gone.

Allison’s wounds burn stubbornly in the water.

 

 

She heals slowly. The marks in her side cross over her ribs and refuse to close. They scab and itch, open up again and bleed when she moves too fast or too sharply. She has always been good at taking care of herself, but she is impatient. She bleeds when she leans over, when she stretches too far, when she jumps too fast.

Healing is a slow and ugly process. It turns her delicate, hesitant. Derek treats her like she is eggshells covered in silk. He makes all her food and churns up more and more clothes and watches her out of the corner of his eye as though she will knock into furniture and fall to pieces. She hates it.

Mostly she is glad for the pain. Slow pain like this means she won’t turn. At least, she thinks so. She lingers instead of running, wonders if she will wake in the middle of the night with claws and pointed teeth.

 

 

There is a terrifying night when she gets up for water and wakes up on the floor of the kitchen in a pool of it with Derek kneeling beside her, pressing one of his large hands to her forehead, her neck.

“You’re burning up,” she hears him say faintly. Is this what he sounds like when he's afraid?

“I’m okay,” she says, but doesn’t know if he hears her.

She is vaguely aware of leaving the floor behind, scooped up again. For half a moment she thinks it’s an out of body experience or that she’s died, that she’s leaving this world for the next. Instead she’s lowered into an ice bath, which she complains about loudly and wordlessly.

“Shut up and stop dying, please,” Derek huffs.

It feels like hours have passed before she reaches the edge of lucidness. “’M I a monster?” she mumbles. She can’t really feel her extremities.

“Not any more than the rest of us,” he replies, but there is something troubled in his voice.

He tucks her back into bed like a burrito, blankets clamped firmly around her body and feet. He is halfway out the door when she calls him back.

“Please,” she mutters. “I’m so cold.”

He stares at her, a deer in the headlights. Then he climbs into his own bed like it’s hers, delicately and cautiously. Lays beside her and very carefully presses them together, so she can have some of his body heat.

By morning it’s like he was never there at all. It might’ve been a dream.

 

 

Derek plays chess.

She doesn’t know why it’s a ridiculous statement but it feels like something to be laughed at. She pulls out a dusty board she finds under the couch and sets up the pieces, having only played a few times. She plays herself for a while, aware of Derek’s eyes on her from the counter where his laptop has fallen asleep in front of him.

“Want to play?” she asks.

“I’m not very good,” he replies, turning his gaze back to the screen.

He beats her in nine moves.

He tells her, tight-lipped, that chess had been something of a daily thing when he was a child. His mother had been alpha, and strategy was something all his siblings had to learn, however painstakingly, in anticipation of becoming heir-apparent.

“But,” he says vaguely, “it’s been a long time since any of us practiced.”

He beats her again in seven moves.

She doesn’t ask questions, but she recognizes that part of him. He’s someone who’s suffered loss. She trusts him a little more. 

 

 

The apartment next door is blasting dance music at three in the morning. Allison exits Derek’s bedroom huddled in blankets to find him sitting on the couch glaring at the wall with bloodshot eyes.

She snorts at the sight. He turns the glare on her.

“You could break down their door and smash their speakers,” she says.

He grunts, turns back to the wall. “I’d get billed,” he replies over the noise.

Allison drops the blankets to the floor and jumps into an embarrassing dance she’d picked up in high school, stomping to the beat and swinging her hips. Derek looks at her like she’s crazy, but she just keeps going. She even knows the words to this song. He rolls his eyes, and then, without warning, stands up.

Five minutes later she is laughing so hard she nearly cries because Derek is not made for dance and she’s pretty sure even the eighties don’t want those moves back.

  

 

Derek is not home when someone knocks on the door a few days later. Allison frowns from the comfiest corner of the couch and returns to her book. She assumes the person outside leaves, but there’s another, more impatient knock, and then the sound of keys in the lock.

Allison scrambles for the crossbow in her backpack, flipping over the back of the couch in the process. When the door opens, she fires off an arrow.

The intruder—who is definitely not Derek—catches the arrow just before it reaches his face. “What the—?” He catches sight of Allison and stops, looks utterly confused. “Allison?”

She blinks, then recognizes him. Tequila guy. “Scott?”

“What are you doing here?” he demands.

Allison lowers the crossbow, albeit slowly. “I could ask you the same question,” she says. She narrows her eyes. “You’re part of his pack, aren’t you.”

Surprise flickers across his face. “Um,” he says, “yeah. And you’re…?” He gives her a quizzical look.

“In on the joke,” finishes Allison. She motions behind him. “Shut the door. I don’t want Mrs. O’Leary to have more reason to ask me invasive questions when I take out the trash.”

Scott closes the door but does not draw closer. “Have you—”

Allison cuts him off. “He’s not here.” She is still holding the crossbow.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” she says truthfully.

“When will he be back?”

“I don’t know that either.”

They stare at each other. She is wary of this version of him: unsmiling, businesslike. He is seeing a tired, weak version of her. He is probably suspicious of her, of the way her hand grips the bow and of the way her clothes don’t quite fit.

“I need to talk to him, Allison,” he says finally. He comes closer, now just a few feet away from her, stops and makes an odd face.

“What?”

The odd expression sticks. “It’s just…” Scott looks at her with new eyes. “You smell like him.”

The way the sentence is loaded makes Allison uneasy. “I’ve been here a while,” she relents.

Scott frowns. “No, that’s not what I…” Again, he stops. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand just fine,” she replies. She raises the bow a little. “I’ll tell him you were here." A clear demand: _Leave._

Scott thinks it over. “Outside this building tomorrow at noon,” he tells her. “And if he doesn’t show, the next person to come looking for him will be angrier.”

“You sound more like enemy than pack,” bites out Allison. She feels oddly protective of Derek, of the sad, quiet soul she’s living with.

Scott shakes his head. He says instead, “You know just as well as I do that Hales don’t like to be kept waiting.”

Allison goes cold at the name. “What did you say?” she breathes.

Scott gives her an odder look than before. “Are you okay?” 

She isn’t. She’s remembering her aunt Kate’s sunny smile, her secret shame, her disgraced grave. She grips the crossbow harder. “You should go.” 

Scott looks confused, but reaches behind him to open the door. He offers her a crooked smile, one she might’ve been inclined to fall for a year ago. “I should’ve scented you while I had the chance,” he says, and then he is breezing out the door, leaving her with little explanation.

 

 

Derek has barely set foot in the apartment when his expression hardens. He whips around to glare at Allison in the hallway. “You let him in?” he hisses.

Taken aback, she goes on the defensive. “He had a key,” she snaps. “And I kicked him out after five minutes.”

Derek swears, which he never does, and slams his things down on the counter with a bang that ricochets off the walls.

Allison feels an inexplicable, burning anger. “Are you going to tell me what the hell’s going on?” she demands. “Why is your pack treating you like a fucking fugitive?”

Derek gives a low, tired chuckle. He turns to place his palms on the counter, back hunching. “They don’t like my life choices,” he says.

The anger tightens around Allison’s stomach. “Were you ever going to tell me you’re a Hale?” Derek goes very still. She yanks her necklace into view, knowing he can hear the jangle of the pendant. “You had to know I was an Argent the minute you saw this. What is this, Derek? Some fucked-up pity party? Revenge plot, maybe?”

Derek’s voice comes out muffled, like he’s talking through clenched teeth. “I told you, I have no interest in killing you. I don’t hold grudges.”

“My family slaughtered yours,” Allison says, “and you  _don’t hold grudges?_ ”

“Don’t tell me you’re mourning a werewolf family,” Derek shoots back.

Offense adds to the growing cesspool of anger in Allison’s chest. “I don’t kill families,” she retorts. “ _No one_ should kill families.”

Derek whirls around. “ _She_ did!” he spits, and his face is an unfamiliar mask of anger and sadness. “And then I killed her.”

Allison flinches.

“I  _killed_ her, Allison,” Derek says viciously. “I ripped her heart out like it was nothing.”

She doesn’t know if he is twisting the knife out of fear or rage or both. She just knows he is pushing her away.

They stand staring at each other in silence, both unsure what to make of this heavy thing between them. Something in Allison collapses.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she mutters. Derek’s expression flickers, but holds. “I’m…” She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t be here.”

He doesn’t disagree, doesn’t try to stand in her way as she shoots out the door. She almost wishes he would.

 

 

Allison is sufficiently drunk when the redheaded girl slides into the barstool beside her. She is so beautiful Allison thinks she’d invite her home, if she had one.

"Boy troubles?” asks the girl with a red-lipped smile.

It sounds so ridiculous that Allison snorts. Derek is far from a boy and she is far from in love with him. But she says, “Yes.” The girl waits, and the story pours out of Allison’s mouth, adjusted slightly for someone who’s never seen a man turn into a beast. She almost says the word  _werewolf_ . Her new friend, Lydia, doesn’t seem to notice.

“I think you should go back,” she says when Allison is finished.

Allison blinks at her sluggishly. “That,” she says, “is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

Lydia raises a perfect brow. “Worse than leaving?” She watches Allison pause, knows she has her hooked. She leans forward. “Which will you regret more: finishing something you started, or turning tail and running?”

Everything seems less complicated when one is drunk. Allison leaves Lydia to pay the tab.

 

 

“I’m not Juliet,” Allison announces as soon as the door swings open.

Derek’s surprise quickly melts into wariness. “What are you still doing here?” he says. Then frowns harder as he sniffs. “Are you drunk?”

“I’m not Juliet,” she repeats. “And you—” she jabs him in the chest with one finger “—aren’t Romeo, and this isn’t fucking Shakespeare.” 

His hand reaches up to curl around hers; at first she thinks he’ll fling it off, tell her to go fuck herself. But he just holds it. “So?” he asks.

“So,” she says, “are you going to let me back in?”

“You’re drunk,” he says.

Allison places her free hand on his surprisingly soft cheek and rises up on her toes to press a kiss to his mouth—also surprisingly soft. He is still holding her hand, which has now flattened to better feel his beating heart.

He pulls her into the apartment.

 

 

She has a raging hangover but is somehow okay. It probably has something to do with her last orgasm. Maybe Derek’s steady heartbeat under her ear. Singing birds? Romantic music off-screen? The smell of coffee? All of those things.

“Scott said I smell like you,” she says suddenly. She pauses, then adds, “He said he should’ve scented me while he had the chance.

She can practically hear Derek frowning. “You knew him before,” he says, not a question.

“I slept with him once,” she admits. “Months ago in California.” She shrugs a shoulder as something rumbles under her head. “I didn’t think I’d see him again.”

Derek is quiet for a long time. “He means,” he says carefully, “that you smell…”

“Like pack?”

“No. Like mine. Like my mate.” He stops, not breathing.

Something warm has curled up in Allison’s stomach. “Am I?” she asks. “Your mate?”

“You could be,” he answers cautiously.

Her mouth tugs up at the corner. “Okay,” she says. Silence ticks by. She says, “You said your pack doesn’t like your life choices.” And then waits.

She half-suspects Derek is asleep, but the shift in his muscles states otherwise. “I left,” he says. “After Kate died, I picked up and I left.”

“They want you back,” Allison says.

“Yes.” Derek pauses. “A pack doesn’t function right without a member,” he explains. “And if a member is too far for too long…”

“They become an omega,” she finishes.

“Yes,” he says again.

“Will you go back?” she asks. He doesn’t respond. She tucks her face into him.]

“Will you come with me?”

The question startles her. She thinks about her family, about her reputation and the meetings that stretch across the years before her. She thinks about her parents, her grandfather. She thinks about herself.

“I could,” she says at last.

“Okay,” Derek replies.

 

 

Allison is unsurprised to see Scott pacing the street across from Derek’s apartment building at noon. She is stunned to see Lydia sitting primly behind him, reading a thick book as Scott wears tracks into concrete. Neither of them looks particularly taken aback to see her by Derek’s side. 

“Derek,” Scott says. He extends a hand, which Derek shakes grudgingly. “Thank you for coming—”

“I’ll come back,” Derek says, startling Allison. “You don’t have to bully me into it. I’ll come back.”

Scott looks visibly relieved, like he was in unbelievable pain and someone just handed him a bottle of Vicodin. Lydia’s lips tilt into something like a smile. “Good,” Scott says. “I’ll call Laura. Sort out the details.” He looks at Allison, with nothing remotely like longing in his gaze. “Should I tell her to set another place at the table?”

“Yes,” Allison says firmly. Derek goes rigid beside her, but he is fighting a smile when she looks at him.

Scott looks so gleeful Allison thinks he might wet his pants from excitement. “I’ll call her now,” he says. He looks at Derek with big eyes. “They’ll be happy to hear you’re coming home, brother.”

Allison looks narrowed-eyed at Lydia, who is standing on stilts beside Scott as he turns away to dial Laura. “Interesting turn of events,” she says.

Lydia shrugs one shoulder. “I did what I had to do,” she replies. And then, as if Derek isn’t within earshot, “You’re good for him. And he’s good for you, too.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get that,” Allison says.

She gets Derek to agree to go to dinner with Lydia and Scott—who are _so_ not together, in Lydia’s words—and thinks, as Scott and Derek prattle about pack dynamics and some Christmas shenanigan neither Allison or Lydia have any idea about, that she’s found something that she maybe wants to hold on to.


End file.
